iPhone 3G in Canada - Do complain to Fido and/or Rogers

It looks like complaining to Fido (Fido is a subsidiary of Rogers) or Rogers about the iPhone 3G rate plan may lead to some changes...

I'm a current Fido subscriber, after a two week vacation, away from Canadian news, I saw the announced rate plan for the soon to be release iPhone 3G in Canada. While I was not expecting prices lower that AT&T's in the US, I was in complete disbelief when I saw the proposed rates. So as any good customer would do, yesterday I went to their web sites and wrote a complain (I complained about their highly priced rate plans and said that I would not buy the iPhone and consider switching to one of their competitor. I closed my complain telling them that I would write to the CRTC about how they abuse their GSM monopoly in Canada to offer non-competitive pricing).

Just a few minutes ago, I received a call from someone named S. Martin from Fido who wanted me to listen to what he had to say about my complain. The guy is certainly not a classic PR representative with only corporate mambo gumbo going out of his mouth. He seemed to trully care about me not leaving Fido for Bell. He did repeat some of the PR stuff I saw on some news site. The interesting part was that he told me that the proposed rate plans were not definitive, that they may change. He told me not to do anything before the iPhone 3G is launched, that nothing was final until July 11th. They will listen to the market and adjust.

He also told me that the CRTC (the equivalent of the FCC here in Canada) did not rule wireless pricing so it was useless for me to write them a letter. That I would be wasting my time. I guess this really mean that they don't want get the wrath of the CRTC if too many people write about this issue.

The conversation with M. Martin was always cordial and on a gentle tone.

So I guess the only thing to do right now, is to be patient and wait... Do not crumble under the iPhone 3G hype (too soon) and wait a little bit for them to see that we are not interested in their overpriced rate plans. They will have to adjust their pricing model and offer something a lot better than what they are offering right now.